Iowa Lottery headquarters. (RI photo)
The spokesperson for the Iowa Lottery says one winning ticket for last night’s record Powerball jackpot of $2.04 billion was sold in California.
Mary Neubauer says the drawing was delayed due to verification issues. “Before every Powerball jackpot drawing occurs, all the lotteries in the game have to account for all of the plays that they’ve sold, because we certainly wouldn’t want anybody’s ticket to be left out of the mix so that they wouldn’t be in the run for the jackpot that night. And then they also have to balance the sales figures that they have,” Neubauer says.
She says they have to be absolutely certain everything is ready before the numbers are drawn. “There can just be discrepancies in there that the lottery has to spend some extra time looking into. And clearly, with a world record jackpot, we were in uncharted territory last night,” Neubauer says. “So, it just took longer last night for those security procedures and those checks and balances to occur.”
The jackpot estimate heading into the drawing was $1.9 billion, and with strong sales across the country pushed it above the two billion dollar mark. Neubauer says the vast amount of tickets sold was part of the delay. “It was frustrating. You know, folks, folks obviously wanted to know the winning numbers right away. But at the same time, we also know that they want us to be extremely careful and make sure that we’re following all of the security steps and that the integrity of the game is sound,” Neubauer says.
She says Powerball is a nationwide game, but each state handles its own sales. “The machines are not all linked together nationwide, every state’s machine machines are linked together, but only for that state,” according to Neubauer. “So, the individual lotteries in the game around the country all have to run their own checks of the tickets that they have.” Neubauer says there’s not a way to just do one big nationwide search.
The cash payout of would be nearly $997 million. The winning numbers in Monday’s drawing were: 10-33-41-47-56 and Powerball 10. The Power Play® number was 2. Four Iowa tickets were one number away from sharing in the jackpot. Two won $100,ooo with the multiplier, while two won $50,000.